By Matt Allan

Customers of furniture retailer IKEA are being urged to check their bank statements after the firm admitted that it had charged some shoppers twice for their purchases.

The Swedish firm, famed as much for its meatballs as its Malm drawers, said that a computer glitch last week had led to the extra charges on more than 100 transactions.

Donna Moore, Ikea’s UK and Ireland customer service relations manager, said that the problem was sparked by a BT network outage on Thursday, 21 July, and had affected all of the chain’s 20 UK stores.

She said: “We are actively working with the payment service provider to rectify these transactions as quickly as possible so that those affected will have the duplicate payments released back to them by their banks.

“We apologise for any inconvenience that this caused and if any of our customers are concerned they are welcome to contact us to discuss the matter.“

Anyone who thinks they might have been affected by the glitch should get in touch with IKEA’s customer service on 020 3645 0000.